With Our Dying Breath Read online

  Mathesse could be quite the thespian when he wished.

  "That is all," Oswald sighed. The plots had been worked out and set.

  The jump coordinates entered would start Roland in a mad rush to get

  to firing position to engage the largest stations first then flee into the

  night. "Mission start in eighteen hours and thirty minutes. Everyone

  rest up."

  Oswald sat in the conference room alone for over an hour, watching

  the map develop in small, meaningless increments. No new data short

  of the joked about Centauri battle fleet would change the mission. He

  pulled the small box from his flight suit and projected Anahita's lovely

  face over the table.

  "She's lovely." Norris' voice was soft but still made Oswald jump. He

  clumsily moved to turn off the projector.

  "Sorry, Norris," Oswald stammered. "I didn't see you."

  Norris smiled and floated over the table to the far hatch and closed

  and locked it.

  "Norris?" Oswald looked and saw that she had already sealed the

  other hatch. "What are you doing?"

  Her flight suit floated past Oswald's head in answer. Norris' body

  was lithe; her bosom floated invitingly between them, enhanced by the

  zero-gravity. Tattoos of arcane symbols traced the curves of her hips

  and shoulders and a bright red butterfly flapped boldly beneath her

  belly ring.

  "Norris," Oswald started. "Lisa, look..."

  "I'm following you to my death," she whispered urgently. "You owe

  me this, Oswald."

  "You are a member of Earth Force," Oswald stared into her eyes

  with difficulty as she slowly pulled herself towards him over the table. "Let me be Anahita to you—"

  "You're not Anahita," Oswald snapped. He grabbed her wrists and

  pulled her face to face. He inhaled deeply, getting ready to scream at her, to explain to her in no uncertain terms why she was not, and never could be his Anahita. The smell of her hair filled his nostrils, the warmth of her body washed over his face. He gave into his ache, into her warmth, and she became his Anahita. He made love to three women there above the table, the guilt of cheating on each didn't come until the heat in the room had dissipated. They had parted satisfied, even if not fulfilled.

  +++ Oswald floated restlessly in his tube, his guilt wrestling with the heat-inducing memories of him and Norris. The guilt doubled as he wondered if the flight sergeant might want to go another round with her colonel. He started and hit his head as someone thumped on the closure to his bed.

  "Colonel?" Breen's voice was tentative. "Are you in there?" Oswald hoped the astrogator wasn’t there to ask for some unfulfilled need and chuckled.

  "Yes, Breen." He reached up over his head and unzipped the closure.

  "Sir..., well you know the map has been updating and I've been very curious about that outer planet, and we didn't really have time earlier..."

  "Get to it, Lieutenant."

  Breen sputtered, pointed at his tablet, tried to say something else, and finally just blurted out, "You gotta see this, Colonel." He desperately thrust the screen at Oswald, sending himself floating slowly across the space.

  Oswald raised a brow at Breen and shook his head. He took a deep breath and pulled himself out of his bed so he could get a better look at whatever his officer was trying to show him. He looked at the display, then at Breen, then back at the display.

  "I haven't shown anyone else."

  "Oh my God," Oswald whispered, reaching for his own tablet as he gently floated Breen's back to him. "Abort the mission, Breen. Get everyone in the conference room on the double."

  Chapter 26 "That's the Gulf of Mexico or I’m a Centauri's panties." Mathesse stared down at the display on the conference table. The thermal imaging overlay showed two massive frozen formations that covered the poles of the body, leaving an exposed strip of land around the middle. Mathesse traced his finger along a familiar coast line that connected the unfamiliar icy caps.

  "Sir, I must agree." McFarran was running his fingers along what looked to be the emptied out Mediterranean Sea. "It is... impossible."

  "Well, that answers another part of the mystery." Oswald's face screwed up in consternation. "We know the where, but not the how. How in the blazes do you move a planet into another star system? I'm seeing it but still having a hard time believing it." How in the blazes do you plan an attack against a people who can move planets light years away?

  "They must have jumped it somehow," Breen offered with a helpless shrug.

  "So now I guess the question is," Oswald said, looking around the table. "Do we possibly die blasting the fire out of the people who did this or do we possibly die investigating Earth?" He shrugged. "The latter choice might well keep us from being able to make an attack run."

  "If we do it right, Colonel," Norris answered, "We could do both. We'll probably just find another dead end, a dead world, out there anyway."

  "Maybe they are in the same sort of stasis we were in," Breen added cheerfully. "Maybe we could figure out a way to free them?"

  "Except of course that they'd all instantly be freeze dried," Mathesse answered coolly. "We might find out what happened, but we won't be rescuing anyone. I say we skip this goose-chase and just start kicking footballs up the Centauri's collective rumps. Sideways." He gave McFarran a look of feigned apology. "American football, of course."

  "That," McFarran sniffed, "is all an American football is good for." He smiled as the others laughed.

  "I wonder how the Luna City Steelers did before, well, you know? While we were gone." Breen asked earnestly.

  "At the bottom if they didn't get rid of Breckenridge!" Relor sniped immediately.

  "You leave Breck alone!" Breen blurted.

  "They've never been the same since leaving Pittsburg."

  "Well they never left. They still practice Earthside."

  Oswald let the banter go on. He knew that beneath the jocularity the crew was weighing heavy matters. Matters of their own demise, matters of more false hope. He reined it in when Breen and Norris started throwing out statistics. It always amazed him how so many people that were the cream of the Earth Force crop would forget basic equations or ship operations procedure but could remember game day stats that had happened when their parents were young.

  "Since only one person has answered the question at hand, can I assume that no one else has an opinion?" Oswald's face expressed a comedic twist that said, Okay, if that's what you want. "We shall follow Mathesse into the void then."

  "Sir," McFarran jumped in. "I say we put to a vote. If we do end up following this madman's suggestion, I want to know who I can curse with clever yet cutting last words as we perish."

  "Agreed," Oswald said, scanning the faces. "I will abide by the vote and we'll plan the mission from there."

  McFarran, Breen, Norris, Relor, and Hines voted to try to solve the mystery of Earth before dying.

  Mathesse, Kirsk, Trese, Stungart, and Devlin voted to just get it over with.

  Oswald smiled at the cosmic joke. Nothing was easy these days; it was still Oswald's decision to make. Perhaps it was the Universe's humorous way to tell him not to shirk his responsibilities; to tell him he couldn’t even if he tried.

  A dread finality hung heavy in Roland's passages. The play was soon to end one way or another. They hadn't saved Earth. They hadn't slain the dragon. They hadn't rescued their loved ones at the last second. It was now just deciding how they would meet their end. Roland was still in combat ready shape, but she'd been through much. Oswald would have put her in for refit already if Earth Force still existed. Roland would eventually wear out and the Earthling's last hurrah would echo quickly into the silence of the void.

  "Sir? Before you count the vote," McFarran emphasized the last word cautiously. "Can I offer another path?"

&nb
sp; "Sure, Aux."

  McFarran responded to Oswald's flat tone with a conciliatory grin. "Sir, we cannot rule out the idea of surrender..."

  "Freakin' Frog!" Mathesse shouted. "Always ready—"

  "You will not speak to the Auxiliary Officer that way, Mr. Mathesse," Oswald interrupted firmly, settling the erupting table back to a simmer.

  "Sir, he just—"

  "Shut your mouth, Asher." Oswald didn't want to jump on Mathesse, as he fully agreed with the tactical officer's sentiment. "Go on, Aux."

  "It has been over four-hundred and twenty years. These are not the people we were fighting."

  "Are you sure about that, Hashi?" Oswald raised a brow. "These are people who can move planets from star to star."

  "Sir, even if they are physically still the same people, attitudes change. Ideas fade away. Insults are forgotten and enemies may even become friends. I just want everyone to think about what we've just voted on." An incredulous grin popped onto his face. "We voted on how we will die without even considering we may yet live."

  "It is a consideration," Hines admitted. "But who's to say that they would even believe us? It'd be like claiming we were Vikings who had been frozen in ice and now we're back. Please don't kill us."

  "And if we do surrender, and don't live happily ever after," Trese added, "then they get away with what they did. I don't think they'd just let us back out to our nuclear arsenal to run wild and carefree in the universe."

  "I am not saying that they will welcome us," Hashi said, spreading his hands out to calm the escalating voices. "I merely want everyone to think about our choices. If this is indeed a vote, then I for one do not wish to fly off to my death over a false dichotomy."

  Oswald glanced over at Norris, saw the curve of her hips just below the table and could vividly picture her hidden tattoos. It was a thought. The Centauri, the Ay-Yon, were human after all. Perhaps even Earthlings from eons past.

  "Why so eager to cozy up to the monsters that murdered everyone's family?" Mathesse spread his arms as if to encompass everyone in the room. "We're not talking about an enemy that bombed our homes or even slaughtered millions of innocent children. If that is Earth, they killed everyone!"

  "We don't know what they did!" McFarran snapped. "We don't even know if that is Earth. We have been flying around blindly trying to figure it all out. The only ones who can answer the question are the ones we want to kill and then be killed by."

  "We know what Anahita said," Oswald said.

  "Sir, with all due respect. General Khadem was, by her own account, not around to see what happened. We are a war rocket and Roland has fought bravely and to the bitter end. I'm just saying maybe, just maybe, the end doesn't have to be bitter." McFarran held his arms over the group, mimicking Mathesse. "We are the last, the very last, survivors of Earth that we know. It is possible that the Centauri might even treat us to reparations."

  "Rape-arations, maybe," Trese countered. Mathesse shot him a conspicuous wink.

  "Are you so willing to die, Trese?" McFarran asked sadly. "I am no coward. I have fought the Centauri longer than most here. I have stood next the Colonel in all of Roland's battles. I will fight until the end—if that is the order. I just want everyone to consider something besides a hero's death. A vote was offered, that means—ostensibly—that the choice is ours." He gave Mathesse a sidelong glance. "Perhaps we could even go get our friends from Luna, if they haven't run out of air."

  Mathesse and McFarran locked eyes for a long moment before Mathesse said, "Then the Centauri will actually have all of the children of Earth on one nice Parisian silver platter."

  Oswald was not about to surrender to the Centipedes, though he certainly craved an end to the war. He felt as Anahita had, she heralded the surrender of Earth as an unbidden relief from years of war and death. Look where it got her. Look where it got Earth.

  Norris glanced at him; they met eyes for one moment and quickly looked away. She was not either of his loves, and he was not whoever she had imagined when they were in this room last. But she was something good.

  "We will investigate Earth." Oswald had only decided on this course when he realized his resolve to die lasers blazing was wavering. It was to buy time, to consider Hashi's arguments. Was his decision to eschew surrender, to keep from living as a prisoner rational? Or were his plans all just rationalizations for murdering as many Centipedes as he could? How valuable were their lives? Even if lived behind bars. He hoped to find something on the frozen corpse of home that would spur them decidedly one way or the other.

  Norris smiled, Hashi bowed thankfully, and Mathesse smiled brightly, especially at Hashi, and gave his flight commander a sycophantic thumbs up. Oswald had seen the hateful narrowing of his eyes that preceded the disingenuous mirth. Oswald looked furtively at each of them, representing battle lines that had been drawn around him and he despaired. They had each become numbers in the equation of Roland's survival and Oswald didn't like how they were balancing out.

  Chapter 27 Roland masked her jump during one of the regularly scheduled bursts of Centauri jump transmissions. There were no complications, no cardiac deaths, and the war rocket appeared close to the edge of Earth's gravity well, opposite the orbiting station they planned to destroy.

  "Command, Tactical. T-REX away." Oswald hated the idea of expending one of his precious remotes against something Roland's remaining laser array could obliterate—if they had the element of surprise. It was a big 'if', especially since Oswald had no idea what sort of sensor suite the station might have. He needed to get the kill before the station could get a message out; Oswald wanted as much time on Earth as possible. The remote had high deltaV and would hopefully kill the orbital station while Roland was well over Earth's horizon.

  They watched the T-REX speed to target for twenty minutes. Then it slowly turned to skim the remnant of Earth's atmosphere. The engine defiantly flared as its fuel ran out, leaving it to momentum and orbital mechanics to carry on. Just before being obscured by the curve of Earth's frozen husk, the warhead became a tiny star of light as the thermonuclear payload powered the x-ray laser rods for one instant before they too were destroyed.

  "T-REX detonation," Mathesse announced to the remaining humans from Earth.

  Twenty minutes later the big-eye relayed a flash in the upper atmosphere, then another. Three bright fiery tails streaked across the planet's face, escorted by a vanguard of smaller flames that spread out before them. Clusters of debris too high to burn whirled and collided like dancers in a masquerade ball.

  "Command, Tactical." Mathesse voice had a giddy edge. "Target debris detected, mass estimation comparisons are promising. I think we got 'em, Colonel."

  Oswald grinned grimly. "Great job, Roland. We've now set anther first. As far as I know, we're the first Earth Force craft to strike a blow in the enemy's back yard." If only he had a squadron, he could raze this sleeping system to ashes and scrap.

  "And many more..." sang Mathesse.

  "Norris, light the LANTRn and get us into orbit. Sensors do the full orbital sweep; thermal, optic, and EM. Deploy nav and sensor sats." Norris and Stungart replied in the affirmative over the net and Roland was back to waiting.

  Each pass painted a darker picture of their home. The oceans had gathered at the poles, obscenely exposing the planet's midriff. Even the bare ocean floors and raised continents were encased in ice. The atmosphere had contracted and grown heavy as it froze in the deep of space, the foster star not sharing its warmth with this kidnapped starchild of another parent.

  "Sir, it seems they had to have sent it through a jump." McFarran's choked sigh was almost intelligible. "That is why she has no rotation, no orbit. It must be."

  "And without the rotation, the water all rushed to the poles. My God," Oswald whispered. "That's why there are barely any ruins or anything on land. It all got washed away."

  "And the Lord promised that he would never again destroy the world with water," Breen intoned hopelessly.

  "I
don't know about what the Lord said," Mathesse quipped, "but can you imagine what happens to a jumping spacecraft applied on a global scale?"

  "It almost makes me hope everyone was already dead," Norris replied sadly.

  Everyone sat with their own grim thoughts, watching Earth's new face appear degree by degree, minute by minute. It was an ugly face, a face beaten and bruised by her attackers. Tears floated freely in the helmets of Roland's children.

  When the preliminary mapping orbits had been completed with no Centauri response, Oswald ordered a shift in latitude to get more complete views of the only recognizable structures still standing; a gigantic dome in the heart of Africa's icy remains and a long rail of some sort that arced across the northern ice cap.

  "Command, this is Sensor. We have thermal and EM signatures from the dome. It looks like there are twenty-three humans where we can get a reading." Stungart zoomed the big-eye to a nearby landing platform. "We could land there easily."

  "Roger that, Sensors. If they don't shoot us down." Oswald began plugging numbers into his screen; mass values, deltaV, gravity, estimated atmospheric pressure, and everything else he could think of. He couldn't know what they would need since he didn't even know what they were going to do down there. He virtually adjusted and readjusted payloads, orbits, and propellant consumption. Oswald's plan seemed to fit within the numbers. But he ran the numbers again, and then again.

  "Figure once, burn once," Will Zaphrim always told his flight students. Oswald wondered how the old man had died. He hadn't taken a full inventory of the dead in the crypt on Luna, though now he wished he had. Anahita was about as far as he cared to go.

  "Tactical, on our next pass I want the listed ordnance set in these orbits. Do you need any help?"

  "Relor and I can get it done."

  "Roger that, Tactical. Get it done. Norris," Oswald swept his display to another page of calculations. "These are the next three passes, and then we're going to land. Make sure to program it so we come down laser one facing the dome."

  "Uh, yes sir."

  "Do you have this, Pilot?"

  "Yes, Colonel," Norris replied more firmly.